Mobile chat has become a mainstream worldwide communication medium. According to market data, message volume for mobile chat has long exceeded a volume of mobile operator supported SMS (Short Messaging Service) communications: for example, about 19 billion mobile chat messages have been sent daily over mobile chat applications in 2012, compared with 17.5 billion SMS messages. A disparity between mobile chat applications and traditional operator-supported messaging is expected to quickly grow; thus, volume forecasts for 2014 by market research companies are in the range of 50 billion mobile chat messages vs. 21 billion SMS messages per day. Some experts point out that the growth numbers for mobile chat may be much higher if an acceptance of an industry wide Joyn platform for unified messaging and file sharing across mobile platforms and operators quickly progresses.
A cumulative number of users for the top eight mobile chat applications has exceeded 1.5 billion people in 2013. These applications are: WhatsApp (recently acquired by Facebook, Inc.), BlackBerry Messenger, Viber, Nimbuzz, Apple's iMessage, KakaoTalk, Facebook Messenger for Android, and TenCent QQ and WeChat. Mobile operators and smartphone manufacturers are starting to add dedicated buttons to launch popular mobile chat applications with certain models of their phones, such as a WhatsApp button on a Nokia Asha 210 phone.
Wearable devices of different types, including Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) and cameras, such as Google Glass, are expected to increasingly interoperate with mobile phones and applications, which may add new dimensions to mobile chat applications and pair them with augmented reality and sensor data.
One key advantage of mobile chat applications that makes them a desirable communications medium for a mass user is associated with their multimedia sharing and platform integration capabilities. For example, each of the three leading mobile chat applications in Asia: WeChat in China, KakaoTalk in Korea, and LINE in Japan are currently offering emoji, stickers and mobile games directly integrated into chat platforms; LINE has launched a line of cartoon characters with their own show and toys; KakaoTalk and Evernote Corporation of Redwood City, Calif. have announced integration of Evernote service features into the KakaoTalk chat platform. File and screen sharing and other enhanced communications features are already present in popular chat applications like Skype and have been included into short-term product roadmaps for other mobile chat applications.
Notwithstanding significant progress in the proliferation of mobile chat applications and in the development of features of mobile chat applications, mobile messaging still suffers from significant shortcomings with respect to capabilities of individual applications and the role of the applications within an overall mobile software ecosystem. One of the most noticeable flaws of mobile chat applications is an absence of meaningful integration of such applications into mainstream mobile software. Thus, in a widespread usage scenario, a person needs to communicate with other chat participants in conjunction with current on-screen and application content: images, maps, documents, web pages, charts, video, etc. However, the use of mobile chat applications is predominantly disconnected from such mainstream content consumption; it takes a significant effort and many steps to explain to other chat participants the nature of a user inquiry or a statement related to the present content on that user's screen. Additionally, existing methods for sharing such content are generally available only at the file exchange level and are time consuming and awkward.
Similarly, in an augmented reality context, a user may function within real life scenes where a communication need may be invited by a current environment with its changing features and situations. The existing mobile chat applications are poorly suited to meet such real-time requirements.
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a cohesive interoperation between mainstream mobile applications and content management systems, on the one hand, and mobile chat applications, on the other hand.